Plans are underway by the National Productivity Centre (NPC) to launch a national productivity movement at federal, state and local government council levels.
The Director General of the Centre, Dr Nasir Raji-Mustapha, who said this in Abuja, explained that such a movement was needed at this time to drive increment in national productivity for inclusive economic development.
“Our focus this year 2024 is a very big one. We are planning to launch a national productivity movement. A movement is the only way we can push our economy to be productive. Low productivity syndrome has been the root cause of poverty in Nigeria. The only way we can turn the issues around poverty and non-competitiveness of our companies and the ability of companies to be able to mitigate the volatile business environment in certain activities and events around business complex and ambiguous environments affecting businesses globally is to embark on aggressive productivity knowledge-sharing techniques,” he said.
He stressed the need for organisations and individuals to imbibe attitudinal change, saying one of the key gaps in productivity improvement all over the world was an attitudinal gap.
His words: “There are a lot of productivity attitudinal gaps that are affecting the growth of nations. Countries such as Japan, Singapore and India launched their productivity movements at various times to close identified gaps in their productivity. We aim to involve our political leaders in the launch of Nigeria’s productivity movement. We will launch it from the federal to the states and then at the local government council level. Our traditional institutions would not be left out and our faith-based religious organisations will be involved. Our Non-Governmental Organisations (NGOs) would equally be involved in the movement.”
He maintained that improving productivity goes beyond acquiring skills and knowledge, but imbibing a productivity culture, “Often, productivity culture is very difficult to change. It requires a lot of productivity promotion and advocacy while also continuing with changing the narrative of the gap in the low productivity knowledge and skills by intervening in companies aggressively helping them with technical knowledge and skills that will help them sustain their businesses.”
As the body that is solely created to drive productivity in Nigeria, Raji-Mustapha insisted that the crafters of the centre’s mandate understand that countries that have succeeded in increasing their productivity had to launch a movement to get them out of the productivity crisis they were in.
He added: “In countries that have succeeded, the president had to lead the movement. We are very optimistic that this government will launch this year. So, we do not have issues around laws that are backing us, even though there will always be room for improvement.”
Raji-Mustapha also said that the Centre is also deploying ‘green productivity’ to mitigate noise pollution around business promises.
“There is what we call ‘green productivity’ which is deployed to help navigate productivity issues around energy use and noise pollution around their businesses. This is an initiative that countries use all over the world to make sure that green issues are taken seriously around businesses. In Nigeria, electricity generating sets are all over our markets polluting the environment with smokes as well as contributing massively to noise pollution. The Centre will begin awareness on the harmful nature of this very soon.”
The NPC boss highlighted the determination of President Bola Tinubu to increase the productivity of Nigerians, saying, “In the President’s New Year’s speech, he emphasised the need for increased productivity in Nigeria. In paragraph three, line three of his speech, he clearly stated that he is desirous of increasing the productivity of Nigeria.”
